Earth recorded its hottest year on record in 2024, with a surge so large the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.
Last year’s global average temperature easily surpassed 2023’s record heat and continues to push even further. According to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency, it has exceeded the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate agreement. .
The European team calculated a warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit). An early Friday morning European time composite data release showed Japan at 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and Britain at 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit).
American monitoring teams – NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth – were due to release their figures later on Friday but all will show record heat for 2024, European scientists said. Six groups fill in data gaps in observations back to 1850 — in different ways, causing the numbers to vary slightly.
Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at Copernicus, said the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary cause of these record temperatures. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures, including oceans, continue to rise, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”
Last year a European database pegged the 2023 temperature at an eighth of a degree Celsius (more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit). That’s an unusually large leap; Until the last two super-hot years, global temperature records were just over a hundredth of a degree, scientists said.
The last 10 years are among the 10 warmest on record and possibly the warmest in 125,000 years, Burgess said.
July 10 was the hottest day ever recorded by humans, with a global average of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus observed.
By far the biggest contributor to record warming is the burning of fossil fuels, some scientists said. Temporary natural El Niño warming of the central Pacific increased slightly and undersea volcanic eruptions in 2022 caused the atmosphere to cool as it put more reflective particles as well as water vapor into the atmosphere, Burgess said.
“This is a warning light on Earth’s dashboard that needs immediate attention,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd. Weather whiplash that fueled Hurricane Helen, floods in Spain and wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate climate gear shift. We still have a few gears.”
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“Climate-change-related alarm bells are ringing almost constantly, causing people to become numb to the urgency, like police sirens in New York City,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “In the case of climate, however, the alarms are growing louder, and the crisis is now beyond just temperature.”
There were 27 weather disasters in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damages, just one short of the record set in 2023, according to NOAA. Those disasters cost the US $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helen was the costliest and deadliest of the year with at least 219 deaths and $79.6 billion in damage.
“In the 1980s, Americans experienced an average of more than a billion weather and climate disasters every four months,” Texas Tech climate scientist Catherine Hayhoe said in an email about NOAA’s inflation-adjusted figures. “Now, there’s one every three weeks – and we already have the first one in 2025, even though we’re only 9 days into the year.”
“Increasing global temperatures means more property damage and impacts on human health and the ecosystems we depend on,” said Kathy Jacobs, a water scientist at the University of Arizona.
The world breaches a major threshold
This is the first time any year has passed the 1.5-degree threshold, with the exception of the 2023 measure by Berkeley Earth, which was originally funded by philanthropists who were skeptical of global warming.
Scientists are quick to point out that the 1.5 goal is for long-term warming, now defined as a 20-year average. Long-term warming is now at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
“The 1.5 degree C threshold is not just a number – it is a red flag. Exceeding it by even one year shows how dangerously close we are to violating the limits set by the Paris Agreement,” Victor Gansini, a climate scientist at Northern Illinois University, said in an email. A large 2018 United Nations study found that global warming Keeping below 1.5°C could save coral reefs from extinction, prevent massive ice sheet loss in Antarctica Can and will prevent many deaths and suffering.
Francis calls the threshold “dead in the water.”
Burgess called it highly unlikely that the Earth would overshoot the 1.5-degree threshold, but called the Paris Agreement an “extraordinarily important international policy” that nations around the world must commit to.
European and British calculations figure 2025 won’t be as warm as 2024, with a cooler La Nina replacing last year’s warmer El Niño. They predict it will be the third warmest. However, the first six days of January — despite warming in the US East — are slightly warmer on average and, according to Copernicus data, the warmest start to the year.
Scientists remain divided on whether global warming is increasing.
There isn’t enough data to see an acceleration in atmospheric warming, but the heat content of the oceans appears to be not only increasing but going at a faster rate, said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.
“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges — climate challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Buontempo said.
University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said it all looked like the end of “a dystopian sci-fi movie”. “We are now reaping what we have sown.”
